only 19% of all U.S. graduate students, they
compose 55% of those studying engineering and computer science, according to 2015
enrollment data from the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) in Washington, D.C.

It will be several months before CGS
compiles final statistics on international
applications for 2017. And some universities
declined to provide Science with their numbers, perhaps out of fear that it could damage their reputation and give competitors
a recruiting edge. But many schools told
Science that they are concerned.

At Vanderbilt, the overall number of international students applying for engineering
master’s programs is down 28% from 2016,
and the number seeking engineering Ph.D.s
dropped 11%. Dartmouth College saw a 30%
plunge in international applications for its
venerable master’s program in engineering
management (MEM), a professional degree.
“That’s never happened before” in the program’s 25-year history, says engineering
dean Joseph Helble.

At Purdue University in West Lafayette,
Indiana, one of the nation’s largest engineering schools, engineering applications
overall are up 3%, says Director of Graduate
Admissions Lee Gordon. But applications
for the electrical and computer engineering
department fell by 8.2%, and applications
from Middle Eastern students interested in
engineering are down by 12%.

At the University of California, Irvine,
overall international applications “are on
par with last year,” says Frances Leslie, dean
of the graduate school. International applications to its school of information and computer sciences are actually up by 9%, thanks
to a new professional master’s program. But
engineering has seen a drop of 10%.

Cornell’s Knuth says that international
applications are up 2% across the university. She didn’t provide a breakdown for
engineering but noted that applications
from Iran and Pakistan were down 10%
and 23%, respectively.

Such declines could have a major impact
on a university’s bottom line, although calculating its magnitude is not straightforward.
The federal government heavily subsidizes
graduate education in the sciences and engineering, so most doctoral students don’t have
to worry about tuition bills. But universities
generate considerable revenue from professional master’s degree programs, a subset of
all master’s training. And in those programs,
international students at public universities
pay tuition rates that are much higher than
for in-state students.

Kevin Moore, engineering dean at theColorado School of Mines (CSM) in Golden,explains how things could play out on hiscampus. This year, CSM’s international ap-University administrators worry that thedeclines, as much as 30% from 2016 levelsin some programs, reflect heightened fearsamong foreign-born students that the UnitedStates is tightening its borders. A continueddownturn, officials say, could threaten U.S.

global leadership in science and engineering by shrinking the pool of talent available
to carry out academic research. It could also
hinder innovation in industry, given that
most foreign-born engineering students take
jobs with U.S. companies after graduation.

“It’s a precipitous drop,” says PhilippeFauchet, dean of engineering at VanderbiltUniversity in Nashville, of the 18% decline hisdepartment has seen in international grad-uate applications as last month’s deadlinespassed. “Your first thought is, ‘Is it just us?’”adds Tim Anderson, engineering dean atthe University of Massachusetts in Amherst,where international applications for theelectrical and computer engineering depart-ments fell 30% this year. But after speakingwith other deans, Anderson believes “it’sa pattern.”Given the timing, he and others suspectthe cause is President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign andhis election, rather than the White House’s27 January travel ban against seven Muslim-majority countries, which is now in legallimbo. And the deans wonder whether theimpact will ripple through the next step inthe admissions process. Acceptance lettersare going out in the coming weeks, Fauchetnotes, “and when we make the offers, whoknows how many [students] will show up?”that do the bulk of federally funded researchcompete for a talent pool that is increasinglyinternational. At Cornell University, for ex-ample, the number of applications from inter-national students has increased by 30% an-nually for the past 5 years, says GraduateSchool Dean Barbara Knuth, whereas do-mestic applications have dropped by 9% ayear. As a result, she says, international stu-dents now make up two-thirds of Cornell’sgraduate applicants.

Schools of engineering and computer science programs are especially reliant on international students, in some cases drawing up
to 90% of their applicants from abroad. And
though students on temporary visas make up